Ranking the Possibilities of the Toronto Maple Leafs Trading a “Core Four” Member

Mitch Marner

Finally, there’s magic Mitch Marner as the remaining member of the core four.

Known for his wizardry with the puck whenever on the ice, Marner has brought plenty of excitement to Leafs fans over the years with his plays both offensively and defensively.

However, he has somehow left a lot to be desired after he signed the massive six-year, $65 million contract (with an AAV of about $10.9 million) in 2019. With that amount typically given to top centres in the NHL, many had expected him to raise his game to another level to justify the salary amount.

Then again, you can't pin the playoff losses solely on him and he's clearly worth the money in the regular season where he has 4 straight seasons of being on pace for 100 points while picking up votes for the Selke Trophy and playing elite defense.

It should also be noted that he has scored close to a point-per-game in the playoffs while massively limiting the other team's ability to score. People want him to score more, but a lot of that is on how he is deployed.

Marner has remained pretty much the same the past few years, always consistent yet never quite becoming the dominating player like Kucherov has done for the Tampa Bay Lightning.
(All stats from NHL.com and CapFriendly.com)

Among the four, Marner is easily the most tradeable player in the group, which has been exemplified by the massive amount of media pieces swirling around the past few weeks on that matter.

At only the young age of 27, he has plenty of great prime years ahead of him, if given the right environment for him to flourish. He is an MVP level superstar and one of the best players in Toronto Maple Leafs Franchise History.

Marner would be easy to trade, but since he has a NTC and since teams who trade players like this regret it almost 100% of the time, it's a trade the Leafs will lose.

When you factor in the surety of losing a trade with the fact he has a NMC it seems unlikely the Leafs will trade him. Then again, this is the Leafs we are talking about and they tend to do a lot of dumb things!

Probability of being traded: 50%